Building a life strategy that gets the results you want – Eric Bartosz – ep 77

Mostafa Hosseini  00:02

Hello and welcome to daily confidence for entrepreneurs. My name is Mostafa Hosseini. In this episode, we’re going to go over to power of perseverance and why getting gritty is your secret weapon, how your subconscious is reacting to those around you achieving goals and the motivation myth, and being the CEO of you. My guest is Eric Bartos. Welcome, Eric. Well,

Eric Bartosz  00:26

thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Mostafa Hosseini  00:27

Great to have you. And we’re talking about building a life strategy that gets the results that you want. Now, let me do the, the my usual checklist, and then we’re going to dive into a very interesting topic. So as usual, please make sure you like and subscribe to the channel. If you have any questions for us and for Eric, pop them in a comment.

And we’ll make sure to get back to you either during the show or after the show. And if you know, someone that could benefit from the topic, which is building a life strategy to get the results that you want, tag them in a comment on any channel that you’re watching, and have them watch the show and share this amazing information with them.

Now with that being said, we have a couple of things coming up the confidence giveaway is coming up during the week of November 15 to 21st. The theme of our giveaway is to help entrepreneurs boost their confidence in different areas of business. And so I’m going to share the link here so you can opt in. And as soon as the giveaway is live, you’re gonna get an email to get access to those amazing gifts and to the community and the rest of it.

We’re also going to have some networking and JV opportunities for you to come tap into our network in the community that we are putting together. So the confidence giveaway is definitely something you don’t want to miss and or send your friends and your network to as well. Now, let me do the proper introduction and bio for Eric so you know how amazing our guest is. And we’re going to dive into a very interesting conversation. Eric Bartos is the founder of bar 40, a 52 week program designed to help people live their best year ever and become the version of themselves they have always envisioned. Eric is also the author of The Best Selling bar 40 achieving personal excellence book, which is available in print, audible and Kindle.

In addition, Eric is a firefighter MBA professor at DeSales. University and helps the community as a race organizer, you youth sports coach and board member of Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Wow. There’s a lot going on. Welcome, Eric.

Eric Bartosz  02:42

Thank you very much. It sounds kind of crazy when you when you rattle them all off.

Mostafa Hosseini  02:49

There’s lots going on. So Eric, let’s dive right into it. What is your story?

Eric Bartosz  02:54

Yeah, well, again, it’s not the thank you very much for having me on. And that was a lot. So I’ll just kind of keep it related to bar 40. So I started bar 40 in 2016. And the one of the first questions people ask is what is what is bar 40.

So just to get that out of the way, the bar is from my last name, Bartos and 40 is when I started, which was in 2016. And in broad strokes, when I was turning 40, I wanted to basically live my best 40th year ever, as opposed to the normal conversation, what do you want to do for your 40th birthday, I didn’t want to make it a weekend or I didn’t want to make it skydiving or something like that I wanted to make it a really memorable year.

So I put together these these goals from my own personal you know, best year ever, which included some some weight loss goals, some fitness goals and stuff like that. And at the end of that year, it all worked really, really well. And I was giving people some, some tips and some strategies, and I just put all my notes together in one place.

And that became the bar 40 book, which really kind of struck a nerve with people because it really lays out how any one of us can can lay their life out to get to those goals. And that became that became the book and then you know the other stuff, my life is just passionate pursuits of mine, the firefighting and the college professor and whatnot.

Mostafa Hosseini  04:20

Love it. So who do you serve? And what do you do for them?

Eric Bartosz  04:24

So I think for the the one thing about bar 40 is that it’s extremely relatable to virtually anybody so I wouldn’t say that there’s one specific type of person that use it certainly a lot of entrepreneurs find the bar 40 methodologies helpful because so often as you as you probably know, we give so much thought to our business and to the to the people in our in our business community that we kind of lose sight oftentimes of how our own life is going right. We’re so busy planning for aspects of our of our business that it’s kind of a blind spot that a lot of us have.

So A lot of the a lot of the folks that really get the most use out of bar 40 are are business owners that say, you know, what if I applied a structure and saw my life through the lens that I see my business, I would probably see a lot of incremental success with health and wellness in general. And they just kind of apply a lot of the bar 40 aspects to their life that they necessarily they wouldn’t, because they don’t have the tools to do that. Just on their own. I

Mostafa Hosseini  05:30

love it. I love this bar. 40 Yeah, yeah. Like you said, you want to live your 40 if your year as the best year, not a weekend or a day or a birthday. And then you came up with a system here.

Eric Bartosz  05:42

Yeah, yeah, that was the thing. Right? So this, you know, my my thought processes was a year goes by very quickly, one way or the other. We’ll be we’ll be sitting here in November 2022. God willing, and how we spent the next 52 weeks is always the question. So having having a plan in place, and some people say 52 weeks, it’s that’s a long time.

But there’s a there’s a reason for that too, because habits take a while to form whether they be good or bad. So in part of our 40 is setting three goals. So gives that 52 weeks gives a runway to achieve those goals.

Mostafa Hosseini  06:17

Absolutely. One thing that I learned recently from Bob Proctor, he was saying the reason that we the years go by a lot faster as we grow older, is the fact that say, a five year old to a five year old, a year is 1/5 of his life or her life.

So it’s a long time. But when we turn 40 or 50 or older, one year is like 1/40 of my life. And you turn around and bam the year is over when you turn 80 It’s like before you know what it’s like a second bet. Oh my God, I don’t even know how to year went by. And perspective. Yeah, I love it. It’s like, Well, that makes a lot of sense. When I was a kid, I was waiting quite a bit for a year to be over.

Eric Bartosz  07:04

Yeah, as your perspective changes, and it’s, uh, you know, the cake keeps cutting into more and more pieces, right? They get smaller.

Mostafa Hosseini  07:12

Like, we just spent two years in COVID, almost. And I just realized, I haven’t seen my dad for five years. Wow. Yeah. And I felt like two or three years, but it was actually five years. That’s crazy. So I’m, you know, I’m flying out to go see my parents like, in December. And I’m really looking forward

Eric Bartosz  07:32

to that. But I’m sure they are too. That’s a stretch. Absolutely. I

Mostafa Hosseini  07:36

love the concept of thinking about how we’re going to spend the next 52 weeks. So Eric, what is unique about bar 40.

Eric Bartosz  07:44

So you know, I health and wellness is not is not a new topic of interest from you, right? It’s always been something I’ve been super interested in my whole life. I’m a longtime runner. And I try I always tried to live a healthy life.

So it was always consuming other books that we’re kind of in hate the term self help, but we’ll just you know, we’ll call it what it is, you know, personal improvement and wellness books. And I found that a lot of them were very, very niche II or specific about one thing improving your diet or trying to get like Beachbody ripped or how to make a million dollars overnight, all these different things, but they were all they’re all kind of siloed.

So one thing about bar 40 is that it’s more of a holistic 360 degree approach. And the biggest difference answer your question succinctly is that every bar 40 journey is completely individualized for you. So when when you set your three priorities, those are what’s important to Mustapha not to Eric, right. So when people are setting up their bar 4052 week journey, it’s all the priorities that are important to them, as opposed to a lot of programs where it tries to crowbar you into some methodology that doesn’t necessarily fit. And they tend to, they tend to kind of crash and burn for the most part pretty quickly.

Mostafa Hosseini  09:03

Absolutely love it. And I love the fact that you specialize this I mean, you is that word specialized for each person. Like that’s not the right word, you tailor it to their needs.

Eric Bartosz  09:18

Right? Right. And so

Mostafa Hosseini  09:21

here’s a five step process that everybody could follow and become a billionaire type of approach.

Eric Bartosz  09:25

Yep. Yeah. And it’s, it’s because not everybody’s got you know, this is the thing like, what is success, right? Success is defined differently by each person. So if there’s a book that just says this is success, one person’s idea of success, maybe like a brand new Ferrari, right?

Another person’s idea of success is being able to spend an extra one hour a day hanging out with their kids in the park.

Everybody’s different success is it’s very much a moving target and very specific to us. So that’s why the bar 40 methodology, you’re successful year one what your future self? If you’re if you’re having a conversation with yourself one year from now, and you can wave a magic wand, say what does success mean to me in this moment, which in this case would be like November 22? Looking back on this on the 52 weeks leading up to it, and that’s what you envision, and creating kind of the kind of the rough architecture for what this year is going to look like for you. Eric,

Mostafa Hosseini  10:24

why are you focused on 52 weeks? Why aren’t you like trying to revolutionize my life in like, 12 weeks?

Eric Bartosz  10:31

That question comes up a lot. Like I liked it. I liked the improvement. But, you know, the challenge that we face, all of us right now in 2021, is that we really live in kind of an instant gratification world, right? We’ve got apps to get anything delivered, we can stream movies instantly. So we live in very much in an on demand.

Environment technology has has brought that to us, which is cool. But what it what the uncool part is, is that it really diminishes our ability to have delayed gratification, because it kind of compressed the timeline on everything, everything we want, we want to quick. So that’s not really the way habits work. Though, if you look at New Year’s resolutions, for instance, in Strava, you know, the fitness company, they did this thing where they track everybody’s exercise, right, it’s a common new year’s resolution getting in better shape.

So they lack everybody’s data. And they have what they call national quick day, based on data, people will stop their New Year’s resolutions, relatively at least large chunks of them. Usually, it’s like the first week of February, they don’t last long, because they don’t give chat like habits a chance to really set in and part of the reason for the 52 weeks is because after doing something for a long time, it really does stick with you. Right, for better for worse.

And, and especially because bar 40 has where you set three priorities for you. And a lot of those a lot of those goals that we want to achieve in a year, that is take time to actually do them. So that’s part of the reason I love

Mostafa Hosseini  12:04

it. So So question is, I have right now as like, how do you actually make sure that people do follow through? And I liked that what you mentioned the national quit day, that’s

Eric Bartosz  12:17

yeah, the wheels fall off.

Mostafa Hosseini  12:20

You know what I mean? Like today’s like, I heard like, different time, time time for a quitting like three weeks, 21 days, one month. And but the fact of the matter is people don’t don’t go, they don’t follow through.

Eric Bartosz  12:35

They don’t yeah, it traditionally they don’t. And there are there is a lot of like, you know, subjective data, stuff like that. I think strap was the first company that I heard of that actually based on based on data of user wearable data, that they were able to track it. Forget about self reporting of how long people stick with it there to say, and this is when the workout stop, you know what I mean? So it is interesting, but yeah, people people don’t, that one of the challenges we have, in general, just, you know, the human brain. When we when we hit a setback, especially with like a New Year’s resolution, say, just take a common one, like a diet, right?

People want to eat better, they want to start the new year, and they want to start eating better. But then it’s late in January. And they found that they’re kind of eating whatever they want for a few days. And they’re like, that’s it I you know, shot I got, I’ll try it again next year, they kind of throw in the towel with that little setback, as opposed to sticking with it and moving through. Not every you know, Perfection is the enemy of good.

Not every day is going to be a good day. But developing that mindset where you’re just gonna say, Listen, I’m not, I’m not going to have every day be fantastic.

But I’m going to keep going. I got my eye on the prize long, long term. Thank you.

Mostafa Hosseini  13:47

Got it. So do you have a method and a process to help people people stick through 52 weeks?

Eric Bartosz  13:55

Yeah, you know, one of the one of the most effective tools. And I think that’s why the bar 40 book became a became a bestseller fairly, fairly rapidly is that it comes in this is not a book promotion, I’m just answering your question of why the program tends to work.

The book comes with a 365 day journal, a daily journal, and I was, you know, I’ve been a runner for 20 years and I’ve always kept a written running journal. And I’ve kept a separate journal like kind of a mindset journal, what wouldn’t write today what went wrong? So I built this journal, from the ground up based on other journals I’ve used to make it a best in class journal. And each book comes with this journal in it and in there, there’s notes to a future self every day has a space for daily successes where you write down what went right.

You know, we’re always good at picking out what we did wrong in any given situation, but we don’t always catch ourselves doing something good, right? So just what you write down and and that that helps motivate people throughout the year. You can look back and you see this stuff. You can write notes to your future self off, and you can track your progress continuously in real time, and then leap back and look through it.

And it’s a real good capture device. I think, personally speaking, more than a lot of the digital devices that we have on our phone or things like that it’s analog, right? No, no technology required.

Mostafa Hosseini  15:15

Absolutely. I love what you said, which was just said about tracking what we’re doing, right? Because we’re really good at giving ourselves a hard time for what we do wrong or what goes wrong, or what could possibly go wrong. And we’re not getting very good at giving ourselves credit for what we have actually done, right. And we do a lot of good stuff every day.

And we’re it’s like the self sabotage that we’re doing to ourselves, like every single day. And it’s like, we’re always looking for the negative. And just and I’ve done this exercise, where when I actually go through write a gratitude journal, or what I’ve done right today, what what am I happy about what was actually the positive side of what I’ve done?

It’s like an instant shift in my mindset, because naturally, we tend to focus on the negatives, but And that’s such a big shift.

Eric Bartosz  16:06

Yeah, we you’re absolutely right, we totally do every day we do like our brain is hard wired to focus on the negatives goes back to like the caveman days where we’re, we’re more in tune to pick up threats around us a threat in modern day is something negative about work or something like that.

It’s not a saber toothed Tiger, but our mind is still designed to fixate on negative things more than positive. So we have to work against that headwind every day. So we need these tools to be able to do that.

Mostafa Hosseini  16:36

And as people are, are now kind of wired to think negatively, even with the media and the social media, all the negative news that we’re getting bombarded with. Absolutely, it’s kind of difficult.

Eric Bartosz  16:51

It’s very, you have to make you have to make a conscious effort to do it. Because you’re absolutely you’re gonna stop, but we’re surrounded by ambient negativity. And, and, you know, I tend to be a positive person no matter what, but you have to really cut through the fog of, you know, forget about social media, but just even general news media and the people that we that we come in contact with every day, the oftentimes the slant is identifying a problem and wanting to expand on what that problem is versus like, What an awesome day today is like we don’t that’s not I guess that’s not like a sexy conversation that people necessarily start right.

Mostafa Hosseini  17:30

Like, forget about positive, even if you tried to do something constructive. Let’s talk and think about something constructive. You don’t get a lot of, you know, bites on that. Like, if you talk if you’d like if you’re on a like Telegram, or Instagram or some Whatsapp group with a bunch of people, you talk to talk about some negative nonsense, people will talk and go back and forth all day long.

No, I’ve tried this. I’ve actually experimented this, like, Guys, how about we talk about something useful for our life? Right? Crickets? No response? I swear to God, I’m not making this up. Not quite

Eric Bartosz  18:09

as fun, right?

Mostafa Hosseini  18:10

What if I post some political nonsense or something negative and say, Hey, I can’t believe this happened. Next thing, you know, they all jump in and try to

Eric Bartosz  18:20

woodwork. Everybody wants to pile on that it is, it is a weird thing. You know, you have to, you have to kind of get comfortable being an outlier and get comfortable being uncomfortable, because and this is I talk to people about this all the time at bar 40. Like you, when you’re doing bar 40, you’re gonna be operating at a different frequency than a lot of people around you. Because you’re constantly your trajectory is going up, you’re trying to do things to improve yourself and to live better, and to make all the steps in your life.

And most of the people around you will not be doing that. And, and not only that, but unfortunately, and I know I know this from so many my own experience, but so many other personal anecdotes, people try to kind of hold you back. You know what I mean? Like, you don’t need to work out, this is a common one, because I work out with them. You don’t need to work out every day, man. You know what I mean? Like, you get your luck, you can do this, you can do that. Like all these things.

 I know what I can and can’t do I don’t need permission or in like that I do what I want to do. But what I want to do is much different than many people. So to them. It’s I’m not trying to one up anybody. It’s just they they see it almost like threatening when when you’re trying to do something they’re not that makes sense.

Mostafa Hosseini  19:28

And that’s just something that I think is important. We’re going to talk about it here in a bit. And that’s given ourselves permission to do something. But I’ll come back to that. Let me go back to your initial story about your 40th birthday. Yeah. And today we’re talking about building a life strategy that gets the results that you want. But how did that 40th Birthday go for you and how did you go about creating the results that you want it? Yeah,

Eric Bartosz  19:50

no, it’s a great question. So for me and for anybody, I think oftentimes we we try to boil the ocean, right? We’ve got hang of things that we want to do are more more than that 20 things. So, like for me, I wanted to do, I wanted to do three, I wanted to do three things I wanted to, I want to lose weight. For one thing, I wanted to become a firefighter.

And I wanted to win run more miles, essentially, there is a bunch of other things I want to do in there too. But I’ll just take those three, because those are my priorities for the year. And every bar 40 has three, three priorities that you’re trying to get to. So for each one of those, I broke it down into these micro goals, like what checkpoints need to happen on the way to achieving that goal?

Because otherwise, any one of those things just like Mount Everest, you know what I mean? Like, how do I get from here to here, like for me, one quick, easy example, I weighed 209. And I wanted to lose weight I wanted to get back to I looked at old pictures. And I found a picture of myself that I liked how I looked. And I said I want to look like this again, it was like I was 25. So it was a picture from 15 years before. So I went back to my writing journal from from that year 2001, I guess it would have been, and I looked at my weight for that week in it was 165. And I was at 209. So I needed to lose 44 pounds in a year, which is a lot, right. So my thing was, how do I lose this much weight and just build this thing. But if I just think to myself, I have to lose 44 pounds, it seems impossible.

So you lose motivation. So I needed to say I want to lose 10 pounds and blah, blah, blah, and break it into chunks. And that’s what I did for for every goal. But that would be my advice for anyone who’s who’s looking to do things, pick three goals. And then each one of those goals, break it down into small chunks. Love it.

Mostafa Hosseini  21:49

That’s what we do with all of our planning and marketing, planning, business planning as well. What are the top three things that we want to do? What’s the most important one, and then break it down?

Eric Bartosz  21:59

Right, right

Mostafa Hosseini  22:01

345 moves that I’m going to do, here are three or five things that I need to achieve or get accomplished. To help me reach my main goal.

Eric Bartosz  22:09

Perfect example. See, this is such a common it’s a common application that we do in business and we do in our in our careers and things like that. But oftentimes, we don’t make that transition to apply the same methodology in life.

We know they’re effective when we apply them to our careers in our in our work, right. But oftentimes, we just don’t do the same thing in our life. It’s not this is what this is why I think bar 40 works for so many people, it’s not overly complicated. It’s using tried and true methods that work elsewhere. It’s just applying them direct implant into our personal life.

Mostafa Hosseini  22:45

Love it, I think that was the golden nugget for people to achieve the results that they want

Eric Bartosz  22:51

in track it right. So you have you’ve got it, you’ve got to for multiple reasons, one to know where you’re at, but to for that continuous motivation. And here’s let me just talk for a second about motivation. So a lot of people in myself and clinic out. I’m a fan of watching Tony Robbins videos, right? I mean, we love motivational speakers.

But here’s the thing about motivation. motivational speakers are almost like, like a bag of potato chips, right? It’s empty calories in the sense that you go and you listen, you feel fired up, you go home, it’s like you had the chips, you’re feeling pretty good, but then you’re hungry like an hour later. So with motivational speakers that you know, you feel good that night, you go home the next day, or you’re getting back and you’re back to your old selves, like Whoa, what happened. Motivation is internally generated in these little achievements that we have every day. That’s what creates the habit of success.

That’s what you want to get that same feeling again, which is why daily successes in catching yourself doing something right and writing down your progress toward your little mini milestones. That stuff is the self perpetuating internal motivation that keeps you going. And that’s your then you get hooked on that and you don’t need external motivation to get you bouncing out of bed in the morning.

Mostafa Hosseini  24:14

That to me almost sounds like and seems like masturbation. Look, here’s the deal. And I know we’re a bunch of adults here, but it’s the same process. You think you have something but you don’t have it.

Eric Bartosz  24:30

It’s a good it’s an interesting analogy.

Mostafa Hosseini  24:36

I get I get motivated, pumped up to do something. But the next thing I know I don’t do it. I was motivated, but I didn’t follow through with action. I thought I have it, but I didn’t have it.

Eric Bartosz  24:48

And that’s the thing about the small steps to like, and there’s that old cliche like the longest journey begins with the first step and stuff like that, but it is really true no matter what you want to do. I remember Ever been like in college like having to write a paper like you would think about this paper and you would dread it, and you wouldn’t do it, you procrastinate. And then as soon as you get like, the half the first half page done or the first page, it’s like, you feel like this weight is starting to lift, like I’m doing it, I’m doing it and then you start to do it every, almost every single goal that we have in our life, you you move infinitely closer.

Once you take that first step, and then you you can start like the heaviest, the heaviest thing in the world. Once you start moving it, it gives gets easier. And that’s the hardest part if we can just commit to ourselves. And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard this this. Some people do their own their countdown and the countdown approach. Like an easy example is when you getting out of bed in the morning, if people are slow to get out of bed, they give themselves a countdown. All right, 54321.

And that so all of these like little mental mental hacks that we can do on ourselves to do to get moving. You know, to me, that’s all in the same vein. I

Mostafa Hosseini  26:02

actually I just listened to Mel Robbins talking about that. Yeah,

Eric Bartosz  26:07

a lot of people love it. It’s, um, it’s interesting. I think it’s like, one of these, one of these more common than we know, things that people do. Like when I when I mentioned people like oh, yeah, do a little time. I’m like, How did I not know about this? I was everybody doing this countdown thing. And I didn’t I didn’t know. But

Mostafa Hosseini  26:22

it actually works. I’ve been trying it for like the past few days, without,

Eric Bartosz  26:27

like getting out of bed or what’s an example of example

Mostafa Hosseini  26:32

is like I was thinking negatively. Yep. And then I realized that and I went 54321 Done. And it was done. And then I was actually able to stop the negative thinking. This is cool. Yeah.

Eric Bartosz  26:51

It gives a little tiny runway where you say, okay, I can do this for a nother five seconds. And that’s it. You know? Yeah,

Mostafa Hosseini  26:58

yeah. When I when I’m on social media, I’ve tried. I’ve tried us a few times in the past few days. But like when I when I realized I catch myself going through, say Instagram or YouTube or something for too long. And I know I’ve got something else to do. I’m like, 54321 done.

Eric Bartosz  27:16

Yeah. I like it. Yeah. And

Mostafa Hosseini  27:19

then I move on, or getting out of bed or, or actually, I tried it once and reading my book. In the back of my mind, I’m like, I gotta read my book. I gotta read my book, and then I wasn’t doing it. Then I realized that I’m like, 54321 Here’s the book page.

Eric Bartosz  27:34

Yeah, reading. Don’t jump into a pool. Right, Goldwater? It’s like, I’m gonna do it in five seconds. Yeah,

Mostafa Hosseini  27:40

I actually got to try it out this afternoon. Believe it or not, you go man, I saw I saw the Wim Hof. Did you see that? That Wim Hof challenge that he just started a couple of days ago? No. So he challenged he so apparently every 40 seconds, someone commits suicide.

Okay. So he challenged people to jump into cold water, which changes their physiology and the rest of it for 40 seconds to get this awareness about suicide and mental health. Okay, I’m actually gonna go jump into a river or lake somewhere. Afternoon today, and I’m gonna challenge a bunch of people, so we got to

Eric Bartosz  28:18

take a video of it. Oh, yeah. It’s gonna be yes.

Mostafa Hosseini  28:24

I actually, I actually did do the cold dip. As often as I can. Yeah,

Eric Bartosz  28:31

no, I mean, huge difference. Cool. Yeah, no, it’s I understand that. I’ve been in a lot of cold water, but it’s like a reset button. Right? A mental reset. Oh,

Mostafa Hosseini  28:40

my God. It do you do it? Well, I’ve

Eric Bartosz  28:44

got I have a pool at my house. And now it’s very cold. That is, you know, 30 degrees last night. So when I’m in that pool, it’s it’s cold. It’s not ice water. But it’s, it’s pretty close to icewater. 32 is freezing in new waters. Waters. 40 Right now,

Mostafa Hosseini  28:58

Eric, I’m gonna challenge you when I do the video.

Eric Bartosz  29:01

I knew this. I knew. I have a hard time saying no to challenges for good reasons like that. So

Mostafa Hosseini  29:12

it’s funny, like what, like when I do it, it awakens every molecule in my body. Yeah. And then I feel really good for like, a good two or three days. Wow. And it’s good health benefits as well. So that’s x,

Eric Bartosz  29:28

you know, what’s it, you know, similar to that, you know, it’s a kind of a related thing. And you probably already do this too, but it involves these breathing techniques, right. So, yeah, so I’m a big fan of a lot of that of a lot of that stuff, too. It’s kind of like the ultimate Ultimate Reset. Reset button for our brains. Absolutely.

Mostafa Hosseini  29:53

So, Eric, in the book, there is seems to be a strong emphasis on mindset. Can you tell me Have

Eric Bartosz  30:00

a bit about that. Yeah, so from for, I think for many of us, we are our own biggest opponents in getting out of our own way in getting, getting real momentum going. So, for me, mindset is kind of the backbone of everything, whether whatever our goal setting is, it’s almost like if we think we can do it, we can, if we think we, if we think we’re not gonna be able to do something, we almost certainly will not be able to do it.

So when we get when we have our heads, right, that’s, that’s half the battle. And there’s so many different analogies and applications for that. In the book, I write a lot about mindset in the context of our future self developing that relationship with a future self. And how that started is briefly, we all have this tendency to want to mentally time travel. And the most common example is when people say, if I can only go back 10 years, or if I could go back to when I was 25. And do this again, or do that, again, we cannot go backwards.

But we can still satisfy that mental time travel urge by going forwards. So this is departments a little bit tricky. But if we can visualize ourselves 10 years from now, and say, I want to go back 10 years and do this differently, that puts us in our present day self. So when I say strike up a conversation with our future self, what do I am 45 Right now, what do I add 55. look back and say I wish I did this, and I wish I did that.

Seeing seeing things through that lens of your future self will never send you down the wrong path. It will, it will tell you what to do, you may not do it, it may be more difficult, and maybe something you don’t want to do. You may choose not to do it. But it will always be the right advice. And I’ve always, I’ve always not always I’ve been doing that for a long, long time. So now my 45 year old self is the future self that I was talking to when I was 35. And the decisions I’ve been making for the last 10 years I now reap the benefits of and it doesn’t stop, right.

I’m still having conversations with my future self about how I conduct my life now. But it’s that instead of trying to go backwards and changing things that can’t be changed, you’re just going forwards. Does that make sense?

Mostafa Hosseini  32:24

Yeah. So walk me through how you do that. Let’s say that you’re, you’re 45. Now walk me through the process. You you imagine being 55 and think about 45? Or how do you how does that work? It’s

Eric Bartosz  32:36

such a habit now. So I’ll give you an easy example. Right? Like, I have a 12 year old daughter she’s in she’s in seventh grade. So I’m going for a run the other night, I wanted to go for a run. And I was about to head out for a run six mile run on the rail trail. And she said, Dad, can we play lacrosse right now. And my first instinct would just be like, I’m going for a run. I can’t, I’ll catch you later.

But I instantly chicken to my future self saying, Hey, stupid, she’s not gonna want to play lacrosse with you forever, you’ve got a limited amount of time to be able to play lacrosse with your daughter, you can run any time. So I instantly pivot to make a decision that my future self says that’s the right thing to do right now, think forward. What?

What can you do now to avoid any regrets down the road. And often. So in that, in that instance, the like, the thing I wanted to do is go for a run. I mean, I like playing lacrosse and stuff like that. But the long term strategic thought was to do something that I can ensure that there’s never any regrets the whole thing, another way to talk about the future self, how to live a life. eliminate any potential of regret, right, that will always shape your decision. Will I regret if I’m talking to my future self? Well, I regret this this it can be choosing your jobs, choosing who your friends are, what decisions you make for health and wellness, how you invest how you save all these things. When you look at it down the road. It’s almost like being nostalgic for the good old days while they’re happening.

Mostafa Hosseini  34:15

You got it? You got it. And I think a very big piece about the mindset piece that we’re working on talking and a lot of people have questions about is like imagining what the future is going to look like. And it’s working towards it. Yeah. Like we’ve been talking about is like, here’s the goal. Here’s the top three things. Here’s how I’m going to get there. And then we just get go there.

Eric Bartosz  34:41

And then you know, it’s interesting because we we have we have a difficult time with long term decisions and delayed gratification because you know, that voice, that voice is coming from a distance so it’s harder to hear than the voice that’s in our head right now.

Like If you want to buy, do you want to buy a vacation, or if say you wanted to buy a new motorcycle, right, and it’s 20,000 bucks, but you know that you should spend that 20, you should put that $20,000 in savings, the easier decision is to buy now for instant gratification. But that’s, that’s the hard part. There’s actually now pretty cool technology, they use it for people that are trying to quit smoking. So you upload a selfie of yourself.

And it shows you your aging avatar if you continue to smoke, and timelines, right. So it’ll show you five years from now six years from now, 10 years now continuing to smoke what your skin will look like what your what’s happening versus not smoking. So it gives you like a real the way our brain interprets data, it gives you a real sense of that same as sun exposure.

They have a few different applications. Same thing, it’s just a visual aid to help people recognize their unhappy future self making choices, making choices now that the data by the universities that have done this are pretty conclusive that it’s effective. And people use it and they it helps people change their it’s all about trying to get people to change their habits and

Mostafa Hosseini  36:17

see what it looks like. I mean, I’ve seen pictures of a smoker person’s lungs versus a non smoker. It’s scary.

Eric Bartosz  36:27

It really is. It’s I mean, that’s definitely that’s definitely scary straight and I’m I’m so I’m a firefighter, as you mentioned at the start of the show, and so I I will tell you, I go on a lot of motor vehicle crashes and a lot of a lot of entrapments, a lot of a lot of wreckage a lot of people, not all of them survive. So seeing a lot of the aftermath of drinking and driving or speeding or going through red lights, which is a common a common thing.

You see the end of that I drive completely differently now than I did years ago before I was a firefighter because that those messages that are visual, very much stick with you. So same thing with cigarettes and lungs and all that stuff.

Mostafa Hosseini  37:10

It’s like if you’re an alcoholic, all it’s gonna take is carrying a get alcoholic person’s body and in a car crash and that’s it.

Eric Bartosz  37:20

We were I was on one recently and it was on the highway and the guy fell asleep at the wheel drove underneath an 18 Wheeler. His car flipped over a bunch of times. You know, we had to cut the roof off and pull them out. But I don’t think he survived.

But in the car, everything was turned upside down. The only thing that was left was a bottle of vodka stuck between the passenger seat in the center console that he had wedged there with like that much less the cap was still on. Everything else in the car was pretty wrecked. But the vodka bottle remained intact. But yeah, yeah, it’s crazy, man. It’s totally crazy.

Mostafa Hosseini  37:52

You know, your years ago, I used to smoke. Okay, what really pushed me to quit was in school and university. I did a study and a presentation on pros and cons of smoking. So I went out there and I read on pros and cons of smoking. And I just like it the hair on my body stood when I was reading like I was like, Are you serious? Like, are you stupid, buddy? Like you really got to spend that much money and time and your

Eric Bartosz  38:23

health. What are the pros of smoking there was probably

Mostafa Hosseini  38:27

a couple of stupid points they claimed that it calms you down but it really doesn’t. There’s none Yeah, and then I stop pulled like dropped like done no more and he actually hurt my body for a while. But then I’m like I am not smart. And that was probably one of the better decisions in my life.

Eric Bartosz  38:50

Oh yeah, for sure. Sure. No, it’s certainly expensive but I mean the health benefits and your lungs your lungs do heal themselves which is the human body is remarkable but over time your lungs do start to get back to their their original their pink but yeah, it’s crazy man. It’s a crazy habit that you know, I don’t know how old you are.

But in our lifetime we’ve seen a big shift. I mean, it wasn’t that long ago in the US that like doctors were still smoking in hospitals and things like that. It was such a widely accepted but strange strange. While

Mostafa Hosseini  39:29

it would they were advising other people to not smoke.

Eric Bartosz  39:32

Yeah, it’s a crazy crazy thing. And

Mostafa Hosseini  39:36

interesting, interesting side of our humanity.

Eric Bartosz  39:40

It really is. Yeah, for sure. And drinking. Drinking is not that far, far behind it and this is this is something that scares a lot of people asked about bar 40 There is a non mandatory but often people do it is 52 weeks sober challenge. And you know you don’t have to do it but a lot of people do it and I Um, because that, you know, drink alcohol is, is is a dangerous thing.

And it’s in itself. It’s a class a carcinogen, it’s linked to, like 36 cancers, it wrecks our sleep, and it messes up our brain chemistry, like you wouldn’t believe. And it’s just marketed extremely well to make it such an acceptable, acceptable thing. But a lot of people, especially after COVID, COVID, and working from home, a lot of people really dialed up their drinking, right we can, we can see this from the percentage of alcohol sales in the US at least that have skyrocketed and people doing these zoom happy hours and it normalized.

Especially in the beginning, if you remember, it was like the end of the world has arrived. Right? So might as well drink up. So people started drinking earlier and drink more often. And there was this. I think a kind of a, I call it a quarantine the hangover, people just kind of pushing back against drinking so much. And people really gravitated towards that sober bar for this bar 40 Silver challenge. But again, it’s not for everybody. I don’t, I don’t really care what people do. But people do come to bar 40 Just for that. I know that for a fact. That

Mostafa Hosseini  41:08

was that was a, those are some interesting facts that you shared that 36 different cancers. And that messes up different chemicals in your brain. Yeah,

Eric Bartosz  41:18

so the brain thing is really interesting, because, you know, a counter intuitively, we drink to feel better, right? So, but over time, so the brain has this brain chemistry, right? It’s trying to achieve this, you know, we might remember this term from science class, but homeostasis, right, it’s a chemical, it’s basically a chemical balance of the right mix. And we’re in for the most part, we’re born that way, like kids are generally happy without without alcohol, right?

It’s only as we get older. And especially with booze, I’m not even talking about other drugs. But just with with booze, as we as we get into young adulthood, everybody around us is telling us that this is the tool for good times, like you celebrate with alcohol, you spend time with friends with alcohol, and you pretty much do everything with alcohol, right? At least at least here in the US, it’s a very common thing.

So we start drinking more and more and more. And then we find ourselves like unable to have a good time without drinking, because our brain chemistry has has changed in the brain recognizes the alcohol coming in, it doesn’t need to produce its own chemical stimulants as much anymore, because alcohol replaces that.

So we just definitely do not feel enjoy good times as much anymore, because our brain chemistry has changed. It reverts back to that when you stop drinking. But when people are like, I’m just, I’m not having a good time, if I’m not drinking, that’s a very literal thing. They’re just not having a good time as they as they would have been without the alcohol. And then there’s, you know, all the other all the other problems that go along with drinking in our body, which we don’t even think about. It’s very tough to lose weight with drinking, because all sorts of reasons.

But I bring that up, because it’s such a common common goal for people that they want to lose weight. But when they’re drinking, it’s like we don’t even digest our food until the body is done processing the alcohol, right? So when we’re drinking a lot, the alcohol recognizes that as booze is a poison is a toxin. So It rids the body of all that before it touches the food. So the food ends up getting converted to fat, and sugars and things like that.

And, and not to mention, and here’s if we’re talking about booze real quick. When we wake up, alcohol kind of hijacks our sleep, right, it suppresses our REM sleep so we don’t get the proper cycles of sleep. So we wake up tired continuously when we’re drinking, after a night of drinking, you will wake up tired. And even if you didn’t have that much, except you didn’t sleep well. So when we wake up tired, our body says low energy, write. Low energy means get more, get more flames go and get more get more fuel in which is which is food.

So we eat in the morning, unless you’re really hungover and you’re not hungry at all. But for the most part, if when you wake up hungover, you wake up really hungry. It’s not because you need calories. It’s because your body has low energy from bad sleep. So you end up overeating so it’s just like whole endless cycle of

Mostafa Hosseini  44:25

I guess. Yeah. Eric, did you have to sober up at any point is that? No,

Eric Bartosz  44:30

it wasn’t. So part definitely for my own journey. When I turned 40 I recognized in my own life that I did not like how and the more you drink, the more you drink, right? The more often you drink, the more you drink and things like that. So when I was coming up to my 14 year old Mike one thing I definitely don’t like in my life is how common this beer thing has become. I was like I was drinking beer constantly. I was drinking too much but I that’s the reason I gained a lot of weight. I was drinking like these IPAs, and these pumpkin beers and all these heavy duty beers.

And I was like, and then you wake up tired, you don’t do your exercise. Like I didn’t work out as much if I was drinking too much, and this whole endless vicious cycle, so I said for one year, I’m not going to drink at all. And we’ll see how that is. Yeah. Which was, that’s my own purse. That was my personal goal. I’m just giving it give it a year. That’s part of my best year ever. Right? Just eliminating the alcohol. And then I did it. And I was like, Whoa, that was really awesome. But I would bad would back to drinking after that. And I was just like, that was just an amazing year, amazing experience. But yeah, I definitely felt like I wanted to, I want it to cut back.

And I felt like, you know, here’s the thing, when the only reason we drink is for enjoyment, right? We drink because we like it. If we stop enjoying it as much, and we stop liking it. And we keep doing it. It’s like, what are we doing? Why am I spending his money? Why am I putting my body through this? You know, toil? Why am I you know, putting up with is a high price to pay with drinking a lot.

Why am I putting up with this high price? I’m not even enjoying it that much. He’s getting me I was just getting sick of it. You know what I mean? But I kept doing it. And that’s when you know, it’s kind of habit. I’m like, Why? Why am I doing this thing? I don’t enjoy it anymore.

Mostafa Hosseini  46:17

It’s like having woken or, yeah, it’s

Eric Bartosz  46:21

ridiculous thing or junk food? Yeah, so that’s what I got.

Mostafa Hosseini  46:28

And I started reading more about how do you deal with the urge. Going back to drinking during that year, like that’s a problem with a lot of people that try to you know, bring in a new habit become healthy, drop a bad habit or do something new.

And that is, the old urge comes back that says, oh, we need a beer right now. And the brain tries to convince you that this is really a good time Mustapha is the best time and it gives you 1000 reasons to pick up a smoke or get a drink or get some big fat burger. And then just how do you how do you? How do you overcome that urge?

Eric Bartosz  47:13

Yeah, so it’s, it’s so interesting that you that you bring this up, because this is the this is the major problem that that almost anyone has, whenever they’re trying to leave a bad habit is, is kind of falling off the wagon, whatever that is, that could be that could be eating or gambling or anything that you just want to stop doing.

So like for me, I wanted to understand how the whole thing works. So I started, you know, again, like, how do I learn more about this lesson? How do I learn more about this? Let’s get into it. And so basically, the answer is you create this, you create a mentality, if the way to have the way the habit cycle works in our brain, it will, it will never get to the point of actual action, if you don’t allow it to an easy example of this one is you take pregnant woman, generally speaking, they don’t drink a whole time during pregnancy, maybe a glass of wine here and there.

But even the even the most party animal among us, like when they’re pregnant, they just kind of stopped because mentally they said, as much as this is going to be miserable. If they’re a big drinker, nine months, I’m not drinking. So the actual temptation part of it, they will talk about I can’t wait to have a margarita or I can’t wait till I can have a beer when I when this baby’s born and all this stuff like that, but they don’t do it.

So for me and for anyone else. When you get to the point where you have this mentality, there will be no fill in the blank. There will be for me, there will be no drinking for the next year no matter what. That’s it like you can you can contemplate drinking. You can think about it and like I can’t 51 more weeks 40 more weeks, 20 more weeks. But at no point.

Do you give your subconscious that wiggle room where it’s going to convert those thoughts into action. And when you when you eliminate that possibility, it becomes infinitely easier because you’re not your subconsciousness wants to solve problems when we’re going back and forth on something will they drink today? Will they not drink today? That’s when your subconscious, like get out of my way you’re wasting energy trying to figure this out?

The answer is yes, you will. And that’s when that’s when you have a cigarette or that’s when you drink because your subconscious just puts you out of your misery it makes that decision. And when that happens, then you just start going to your your Rolodex of excuses and justifying why you did it. Well is a hard day. Well, tomorrow I’m gonna start again and all that stuff. But if you eliminate that possibility, super easy. Well, what are your

Mostafa Hosseini  49:49

What are your thoughts about thoughts on having support and accountability partners in the rest of it during this kind of processes? Oh,

Eric Bartosz  49:58

I think it’s I think it’s a huge help. Um, you know, when we when we personal accountability is huge, right? But when we put in these accountability devices, when we make a public proclamation, then we’re much more likely to stick to it unless, and here’s the, here’s the fine print, unless you’re in you, because you can train yourself right out of it too. If you’re the type of person who, every day they’re making some declaration and they never stick to anything, then you just, you know, kind of cry, Wolf.

But you can, so you can kind of overuse yourself right out of it. But if you’re, if you’re doing something big in your life, and you plan on sticking with it, and if you save the people closest to you, especially with regards to something like like drinking, or but it’s just as easily for exercise, right? find like minded people and say, this is something really important to me, I know I can do it.

If you see me slipping, tell me this is what this is what friends are, this is what friends are for. Right? Like in the in the police and fire servers, we say, I got your six. And that means I see your back when you can’t see it. And I’m protecting your back because you can’t see that. And so when you’re when you have people around you that are helping you keep you on the on the on track.

We don’t, we don’t want to humans in general, don’t want to be embarrassed and feel shame. That’s another one that goes way back to the old days where we wanted this, we had this pack mentality. So we try to avoid that on a subconscious level.

So we’re much more likely, if you tell somebody, they’re gonna go for a bike ride with them or run, and you say, you’re gonna meet them at six o’clock. Even if you don’t feel like running, you’re likely to meet them because you don’t want to disappoint them.

Versus if you were just by yourself. You could say like, you know what, I don’t feel like running, I’m gonna skip it. But when you have other people that are kind of in the loop with you, you’re more likely to stay with it. That makes sense. Absolutely.

Mostafa Hosseini  51:59

Absolutely. That was that was really powerful. Appeal is asking, Do you ever think of think of it from the perspective of advantages and disadvantages when making decisions?

Eric Bartosz  52:14

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That’s kind of ties into it. Thanks for the question that kind of ties into the future self bar. Right. So that’s always the calculus, I think it gives you the perspective of, of looking back on a decision you already made much more so than if you’re at a fork in the road right now saying, Do I go this way, or this way, when you’re when you’re looking back on it, same thing, like, I wish, I wish I did this, or I wish I did that, it’s easier to see it from from the perspective of already having done it.

And that’s, I’m telling you that it’s a very effective method, it just takes a little bit of practice, and a little bit of habit of getting into it. But that those advantages and disadvantages, will kind of reveal themselves to you. Obviously, nobody wants to make a decision, that’s going to be a bad one. But I think a lot of choices will always have that kind of pro and con list, right? Just got to kind of wait.

Mostafa Hosseini  53:09

Yeah, it’s kinda like, I think we talked about earlier, what are the top three that I want to go after. And you got to kind of have to weigh into advantages and disadvantages of the approaches the strategies and be like, this is how I’m going to do it. Here are the top three that I’m going to stick to. And I’m going to try to get there regardless of what happens then. I guess,

Eric Bartosz  53:29

the common cause a common problem is like we you know, if we’re ambitious minded, which so many of us are, we want to do all these things. And then unfortunately, we can only we only have so much bandwidth, right, we can only spread ourselves so thin, and still make these things happen.

So what we don’t want to happen is have 20 things we want to do and have 17 failures simultaneously going on because we can we just simply can’t do everything. And then we lose motivation. So that’s part of the you know, the refinement process of understanding. And this is only something we can only answer for ourselves, right?

Because in I use that I use the SMART acronym about goals. Is it specific? Is it measurable? Is it accepted? Is it realistic and timeframe? And so that our goals have to kind of pass those tests? And if they do then we just have to choose what what is our priority in bar 40 By the way, this is not a once in a lifetime scenario like I I’ve been doing bar 40 For years, every year I have different goals and they change over time and I’m just kind of I’m a lifetime member right? But for people that enjoy bar 40 They do it again the next year, there’s always more goal ideally, there’s always more are more goals and what you know, people can change. Anytime history is not destiny.

Right and every day is that brand new blank page. In our own life story we get we get the right the future is already written The past not written yet. We can always today’s. Listen, we’re we’re never going to be as young as we are right now, in this moment. That’s that’s the truth of it. Right? No matter how old we feel and stuff like that, this, this is it. We’re the youngest we are ever going to be whether you’re 18, or you’re 88. Right now.

Mostafa Hosseini  55:24

You’re the youngest that you could ever be. Right

Eric Bartosz  55:26

now, in this second year, and I, and it’s it. And that’s kind of a, it’s an interesting, it’s an interesting perspective, because we all 10 years from now, we’re gonna wish we’re this age again. And then we that’s the thing about getting, getting the stall jack for the good old days, while they’re still happening. Because we all we all, we all have that tendency to look back and go, Man, it was pretty good back then, like life was like, I was so young.

Look at those pictures. I was so young. But we are right now. We’re all this is we’re pretty young, relatively love

Mostafa Hosseini  56:00

it. Let me ask you another question. And then we’re gonna, we’re kind of getting close to wrapping up. In the book, you talked about being a CEO of your life. Can you tell us what you mean by that? I mean, a good segue today.

Eric Bartosz  56:15

Yeah, I love this idea. And I use it, I use it all the time, too. Because what I mean by that is trying to remove some of the subjectivity, in emotion out of out of a lot of the ideas in around our life, right. So if you’re the CEO of a company, we look at these different aspects. And we’re able to strategically make decisions that help the overall company, and they’re not always easy decisions.

But it’s our it’s our job as CEO, to make the decisions that are going to move us forward. In our own life, we have to make hard decisions sometimes. And oftentimes, and this kind of ties back into the like, they have the choice to stop drinking, stuff like that. So we can call a habit or repeated behavior in our life, let’s just call that a department or a product, a specific product.

So we’re the CEO of a large cookie company, right? And this one, this one brand of cookies, will they let’s call them tuna fish flavored Oreos, right? They they sold well, in the 70s, and 80s. They haven’t been selling well now. But everybody in the company has an emotional attachment to this particular type cookies.

As CEO, it’s not about emotional sentimentality, we’ve got to eliminate that cookie, it’s not profitable. It’s a drag on the business, cut it loose, get rid of it. Same thing is when we see over on life, we look at habits and we look at sometimes unfortunately, it’s the people in our life. It’s old friends that we really don’t don’t fit into our life that much anymore. But we tend to talk to them I’d have maybe they are just bad people, maybe they like cats on fire, maybe they just drag us down.

And and we have to make strategic decisions that are sometimes difficult. But when we look at it from a CEO perspective, we realize that’s our responsibility to our own life.

Mostafa Hosseini  58:19

of it, being the CEO of your life, like getting a handle on it, manage it, drive it making decisions, and they

Eric Bartosz  58:26

make hard make hard decisions. Like when I like my goal for this year, I run the year, so I run 2021 miles, at least this year. And a lot of times, I don’t feel like running. I don’t care what I feel like though, because this is getting done. This objective is getting done. So it’s not what i It’s not what I want to do or don’t want to do. It’s what needs to be done this week for four miles.

And it’s a hard it’s a hard line approach we can take but it develops that burn the boats mentality where we these things are not up for optional consideration needs to get done. It just gets done. That’s that hard CEO line, you can be like, you can be a really tough CEO that you wouldn’t necessarily want to work for. But it’s your own life. You got to you got to make the right decisions.

Nobody else can do it for you. And that’s the thing that a lot of people forget. You know, we we don’t we can’t wait for other people to make the decisions for us in our own life. We have to take ownership and get the results we want. Because if we’re waiting for somebody else to do it, that may or may not ever happen. Got it?

Mostafa Hosseini  59:28

Got it got it. Perfect. Eric, could you tell us about your gift, the amazing gift that you’re sharing with with us?

Eric Bartosz  59:38

Well, I would I would love to welcome some of your listeners in your viewers for a free 30 minute bar 40 coaching consultation. Whoever would like to participate in that we can do the first first five people to kind of sign up and submit. And that will be my gift to your your audience.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:00:05

Amazing gang. So again, the first time people that visit the page, bar 40 book.com forward slash media, good to get access to a complimentary 30 minute bar 40 coaching session to set up your goals, get some feedback on what needs to be done and tap into Eric’s wisdom

Eric Bartosz  1:00:25

will give, we’ll get we’ll get you on the right path. We’ll set up a custom program to get you moving in the next. next upcoming weeks for sure. Love

Mostafa Hosseini  1:00:35

it. Love it, love it. And you know, again, as you if you’re watching, you’re listening, with all the madness that’s been going on with COVID Getting help while we’re all like kind of forced to stay at home makes a massive difference. So if setting personal goals, your health goals and the rest of it is a priority and it’s it is on your radar as we’re getting close to the New Year. Definitely reach out have a conversation with Eric and see how they can help you. Yep.

Eric Bartosz  1:01:06

Yeah, we’re real quick to bar forty.org is an easier way to to book us book a session than the bar 40 books site, the bar forty.org goes right to you can you can book sessions right there.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:01:19

Love it. Eric, I know we’re kind of out of time can ask you some personal questions real quick. Course. Beauty. What’s a new thing you’ve tried recently?

Eric Bartosz  1:01:28

A new thing I’ve tried recently. So I recently I wanted to get back into habit of doing push ups, push ups. So I set my alarm on my phone for the start of every hour. So every hour 10am 11am noon, I would get down and do 30 Push ups for 10 hours a day. So every day I was getting 300 additional push ups and that’s probably the most reason thing I did to create the habit of doing more push ups. Yeah, that’s been. That’s been super helpful.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:02:06

So one thing that I haven’t tried, but I’ve seen it and I’m going to try soon is that if you do the Wim Hof breathing. Okay. Currently, you could do much more push ups that you are used to. Okay. Give that a try to try that guy, watch somebody on video. They did like 60 or 70 Push Ups. Okay. And they’re like, I have never ever done that many push ups on my like, first try. I’m gonna try it,

Eric Bartosz  1:02:37

man. I love it. I love ideas for improvement.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:02:40

Love it? What are your top favorite two or three books that made a massive difference in your life or business?

Eric Bartosz  1:02:48

Oh, man. So I’ll give you I’ll give you one old one that some people might have already read. But it’s, it’s tried and true. It’s Dale Carnegie, how to how to win friends and influence people. I think it’s a fantastic book for life and for business. There’s a book that I that I really think everybody would benefit from. It’s called The Way of the seal by Mark Devine.

He’s a former Navy SEAL trainer. And he does. He does amazing programs for that. And, man, it’s so that’s a hard one. There’s a new book that I’m reading right now. And it’s called Think again, which is a really neat book about how we how we can get out of the kind of fixed mindset and rethink ideas that we that we believe that aren’t that aren’t necessarily accurate or correct and retrain our brain to consider new information. overwrite the old stuff.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:03:45

Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Amazing. What’s one advice that made a massive change or difference in your life?

Eric Bartosz  1:03:56

One piece of advice. Let’s see. That’s a That’s a good one. Let me let me give you any more. I was gonna say when we come back to that one, I’m

Mostafa Hosseini  1:04:07

sure if you had a Facebook or a Google ad, or everyone on internet could see your message. What would your message for people of Earth be?

Eric Bartosz  1:04:19

I would say that this is not a rehearsal. The cameras are rolling. We’ve only got one chance at this life make make every day really matter.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:04:30

Love it. Love it. What advice would you give your 20 year old self?

Eric Bartosz  1:04:37

I’ll give my 20 year old self the advice to start having conversations with your 40 year old self.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:04:44

Conversations with your older

Eric Bartosz  1:04:46

self. Older self.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:04:50

Love it. Eric, this has been an absolutely amazing conversation. I really feel like we could go on forever.

Eric Bartosz  1:05:00

I know I feel like we can talk we can talk for five hours.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:05:05

I love mindset. I love goal setting. I like chasing dreams. I like visioning, envisioning future present self. And it’s like, you’re like speaking my language. Is there anything that you’d like to add? Be before we wrap up? No,

Eric Bartosz  1:05:21

I would just say if anybody, if anybody enjoyed what they’re hearing and wants to learn more, just, you know, go to bar forty.org, you can sign up for the bar 40 newsletter that comes out. Every couple months, it’s follow bar 40.

On LinkedIn, there’s always new posts. And I write I write a column for a local news company here in Pennsylvania that I repost those file those columns on the bar, 40 website, under Bartok. So there’s all sorts of bar 40 content about living your best days ever, and just health and wellness and everything is almost instantly usable in all of our lives to to just try to get to that, that best version of herself that we’re all there. We’re all chasing.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:06:06

Love it. That is amazing game, go to a bar 40 book.com forward slash media to get access to your complimentary coaching session available to the first 10 listeners that respond, you can go to book bar forty.org To book a session with Eric as well. Eric, thank you very much. I really appreciate it. This was a great conversation.

And again, if you’re watching listening, please make sure to like and subscribe to the show on whichever channel you’re watching. If you have any questions, post them as a comment, make sure to tag your friends and follow the show as we’re going to see you next week. Also, the confidence giveaways coming up during the week of November 15 to 21st. You have access to a list of gifts that helps you boost your confidence in different areas of your business.

That’s coming up and I’m very excited about it. And that’s it for me. Thank you very much for joining us. My name is Mostafa Hosseini, your host again the conference for entrepreneurs. Thank you, Eric.

Eric Bartosz  1:07:04

Thank you myself and that was awesome, man. Good times.

Mostafa Hosseini  1:07:07

Thank you. Appreciate it. See you guys next week. Bye bye